References To The Concept
- The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Outrageous Okona" features Joe Piscopo as a comedian who, in attempting to teach the android Data the concept of humor, refers to words ending in a k as funny.
- In a sketch on The O'Franken Factor, Al Franken plays an "outsourced" version of himself with an exaggerated Pakistani accent, who remarks that "All of my material is in my native language, Urdu. And most of it is wordplay that would not translate. Hard k's and p's, though, such as hockeypuck, are always funny; just ask 'Don Rickles, the king of the put-down.'"
- In The Simpsons episode "Homie the Clown", Krusty the Clown tells Homer during a lesson at his clown college: "Memorize these funny place names: Walla Walla, Keokuk, Cucamonga, Seattle."
- Comedian George Carlin, drawing from W.C. Fields, talked about kumquats, garbanzos, succotash and guacamole in his older routines, claiming that because of their names they are "too funny to eat."
- In the December 21, 1989 Dilbert comic strip, Dilbert uses his computer to determine the funniest words in the world, coming up with chainsaw, weasel, prune, and any reference to Gilligan's Island.
- On the cover of his book How I Escaped My Certain Fate, the comedian Stewart Lee nominates wool as an inherently funny word.
- In the 30 Rock episode "Kidney Now!", Dr. Leo Spaceman states that "kidney is such a funny word," and that "it's the hard K sound that's making giggle."
- The BBC Radio 4 panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue includes an occasional round called "Straight Face", in which the panelists take turns saying a single word. A player is eliminated from the game if anyone in the audience laughs at their word ("even the merest titter"). The winner is the last player standing.
- The 2002 LaughLab study suggested that the word "duck" was the most inherently funny animal name, with Professor Richard Wiseman saying that "If you're going to tell a joke involving an animal, make it a duck."
- A 2008 Grammar Girl podcast was all about words that sound funny, like "bamboozled" and "kidneys."
Read more about this topic: Inherently Funny Word
Famous quotes containing the words the concept and/or concept:
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